Tag: retweet

As we all know that few days ago twitter has introduced new RT feature, and Twitter team specially @ev seems to like the new feature. But do the community like it? Is RT really created by twitter? I as a twitter user do not like the new RT feature. I have my own reasons like other people but I would like to discuss the reason for which any sensible person won’t like twitter.

Like is not ReTweet

RT stands for ReTweet which means tweeting a tweet again because you find it useful and you want to share it with your followers. Now the way new RT feature of twitter works totally negates the definition of RT. Because with new RT feature the tweet is never ReTweeted, it just gets listed in the timeline of a user. The only thing that happens is bunch of meta data gets attached to the tweet. In simple words the new RT feature of twitter works exactly same as “Like” button in Facebook.

Tweet is lost

It looks like Twitter assumes that we watch our twitter timeline whole day even when we are sleeping, but this is not true. When I am sleeping or away from twitter I miss a lot of tweets, though I try to scroll back and read many of them but I don’t always read all of them. This means that I can and will miss some important tweets even if they are RTd by all of the people I follow, because the ReTweeted tweet just do not pop up in the timeline. It stays at its current position and the new meta information is attached. For example if one of your friend Retweeted a tweet while you were sleeping. then after that ReTweet there were like 100 or so tweets in your timeline, you woke up in the morning and started using twitter. You missed that ReTweet because you didn’t scrolled down, now one of your friend gets on twitter and ReTweeted the tweet that was ReTweeted while you were away or sleeping. That ReTweet will not popup in your timeline even your another friend just ReTweeted it, so the ReTweets have lost the value.

Community Response

I have seen many people using the new RT feature and many have stopped using it like me because I think the feature that was introduced by Twitter is not really a ReTweet but Like. I am staying with the old ReTweet and hope that many others will follow as the new ReTweet just don’t work the way it should. If the ReTweeted Tweets start poping to the top then the new ReTweet feature might be somewhat usable but until then the new feature is just not for me. I won’t be ReTweeting anything that will be ReTweeted in my timeline using new ReTweet feature, sorry guys.

I hope Twitter will listen to its users because they are users who have build the twitter and specially the ReTweet was invented by the community not by twitter. I have seen many people switching to alternatives, maybe I will follow the steps too but not in the near future. I hope Twitter team will understand the importance of users feedback and will listen to us and at least I will not have to look for the alternatives.